By Linda Smith

This year I turn 60, and as I look in the mirror, I wonder where did all the years go? Forty came and went, then 50, and now 60. Jeez, I didn’t notice those gray hairs there before; where did they come from? And those extra pounds? Is that really me?

So what if my young girlfriends dress up in skimpy cocktail dresses to go to the movie to see Carrie and her friends in “Sex and the City.” That doesn’t hurt my feelings one bit; instead I’ll slip on my robe, grab a mug of hot chocolate, turn on the TV, and watch Betty White in a rerun of the “Golden Girls.”

For my birthday, my daughter gave me a copy of What We Know So Far: Wisdom Among Women. This book follows my reading over the decades of books like It’s Only Too Late If You Don’t Start Now: How to Create Your Second Life after 40 and Fifty on Fifty: Wisdom, Inspirations and Reflections on Women’s Lives Well Lived. What’s with the “well-lived” at only age 50? My aunt Willow Mae in South Carolina lived to be 103 – now that’s well-lived!

Congrats, 60 and retired. Well, now I can get that long awaited Senior Club Card over at Home Town Buffet, but that retired part, hmmm… Whoever said that a woman retires, should have said that a woman “tires.” I wonder where I put that bottle of Geritol? So time to get some hair coloring, jump on that Thigh Master, and swing by Victoria Secret. Seventy is not that far off!

Linda Smith is retired and lives and plays in San Luis Obispo. Like Erma Bombeck, she believes that “If you can laugh at it, you can live with it”.